Got Structure?
July 21st, 2010
How your business is structured will determine the ability for your company to grow, the timeliness in which things get done, the clarity of your employees, and the culture of your organization.
Do you want to run or work in a company that is stagnant? Has too much red tape to get anything done? where the staff are as confused as the customer? Where “I don’t know” is accepted as normal behavior/responses?
This is what is happening with many companies. They neglect the way there business, department, etc is structured. For example: You have a service company with 146 employees both part and full time. The company has 3 positions under the CEO. None of those positions are marketing, operations, HR, or sales. So what happened?
The company grew and the CEO and his 3 staff who had been with him the longest just kept running the company at their executive meetings. They did not see the 30,000 foot view of how the structure they had accepted was killing their business. If you build a brick wall as a foundation and do not put in several bricks in the correct position or place, what happens? The wall is not strong and can come tumbling down.
Find how to build the most optimal structure for your growing company…and if you need help Contact Us!
How to Avoid the Pitfall of Strategy
June 21st, 2010
The major issue with Strategy is not developing it…it’s Executing the Strategy. Writing plans on paper and talking about those plan with employees is not very difficult. Great leaders are able to plan and execute and deliver the results desired in strategic plans. The reason many fail is because they do not create a plan that has the steps, time lines and details to be managed to completion.
We have seen many strategic plans developed by CEO’s and Board of Directors and the most of them have only two components: Goals and Budget. Setting goals is an important part of our strategic planning or anyone’s, but the issue is to what level of detail is it done? Assigning budgets to the plans are also great, but do you really know what you are missing?
The Octopus Solution designed a Strategic Planning tool to help our clients; YMCA’s, health-care providers, professional services, and many other corporations, execute their plans.
What do we do that is so successful? Here is a high level view of our planning tool:
- Detail the vision of how things look when the plan is fully achieved
- Define Why that vision is important and needed
- Define the environment you need to create, maintain and hold to carry out the plan
- Ascent Planner – this details out the steps in the plan – critical to success
- Assignments – tasks assigned to the staff to carry it out specific action items – done in accordance with our performance management modeling
- Creating due dates for the assignments to be delivered on time
- Level the playing field by defining how all staff agree to work together
- Performance management
These 8 steps are part of our strategic planning and execution process and we work with clients to show them effective ways to manage the process to achieve the milestones set. If you would like to get more information or work with us to develop and execute a strategy for your business, email us at: info@theoctopussolution.com
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” -Sun Tzu
What is Leadership Missing?
May 21st, 2010
Leadership is slipping in this country. Standards are not held, accountability is absent and many leaders are too influenced by the masses. Businesses need leadership and in the absence of leadership people with look to anyone that steps up to take control of a situation. This means that if you are not leading your business, someone else is and it may not be a qualified person, AND it you will not receive the results your want if someone else is running the show.
What is the most important part of being a successful leader? The answer is your Context. Context is the attitude and environment you create in your company. It is your role as a leader to hold the higher context in your business through good times and bad. The larger your context, the larger your business will scale and grow consistently.
What is your Context with your business?
50 Ways To Help Run Your Business
April 21st, 2010
There are approximately 30,000,000 small businesses in this country representing approximately 70% of the jobs. It is what we do. We are a nation of small business owners and employees working in the small business arena. Big business may get the spotlight, but small business is the heartbeat of this country.
What does this mean and what can we learn from this?
We are born to compete. Small business is were we do it. Unfortunately we tend to do it by ourselves, alone without help, guidance, or support, isolated, committed and focused on our daily tasks.
I therefore offer you these guidelines, what I have learned from other business owners as they figure out what works and what doesn’t work.Here are some of those ideas that works that we have learned from our clients.
50 ways to run you business more effectively:
1. Get guidance and direction from other men, your own board of directors. You will do better if you do. You cannot do it as well alone.
2. Numbers are the language of business, learn to use them and understand them, enough with the excuses.
3. Flat management is better then pyramidal organization, divest authority, grant responsibility and nurture leadership. Inspect but delegate.
4. Teams work best, far better then individual efforts, create teams, support them and let them succeed.
5. Key indicators are crucial to tracking, monitoring and thus managing your business succesfully. Use them.
6. Systems are critical for success at every level. Create them, write them down, use them…No oral legacies.
7. Training is critical, accept this mandate and never stop training your employees. Create a career path based on training.
8. Have a business plan before you start up a new business or buy an existing business and make certain you have a cash flow proforma. If you have not raised enough capital to launch your business, do not launch. Wait, raise more, change your plan or cease the effort.
9. Incentive based reward systems work very well and increase productivity and success.
10. Quality is king.
11. Be careful not to waste money on ineffective advertising. Test before a full launch.
12. Use a web site and a blog, create relationships. Web 2.0 blogging, video, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
13. Productivity is the key to profit, monitor it and make certain it is maintained at a very high level. Too much employment is self defeating. Forget the concept of overtime, increase productivity first.
14. Profit over gross revenue.
15. Do not continue in business if you cannot figure out how to earn a profit as well as take home a paycheck both are necessary.
16. Avoid personal guaranties at all costs.
17. Never allow your wife or family to sign anything.
18. Protect your home from business debt, there are many ways but the best is to not be in title on your home, or organize your assets effectively.
19. Make certain you always pay your payroll taxes, use a payroll service to force compliance. Cease operations or make drastic changes if you cannot pay them.
20. Repeat business is incredibly important and very valuable.
21. Word of mouth promotion and marketing is the best form of advertising. References and testimonials are supreme.
22. Salespeople should always be compensated by commission.
23. Manage through action, set examples by doing.
24. Appreciate your employees, thank them for their effort and loyalty, support their mistakes, errors and failed risks, it will pay you back many fold.
25. Quickbooks is most often the answer to effective accounting management systems.
26. Define your market niche and capitalize on it.
27. Ask your employees, customers and vendors how you are doing, take their advice seriously.
28. Leave your ego out of your business decisions.
29. Accept responsibility for your own errors, and reward and recognize the success and achievement of your employees.
30. Successful business is built around high quality employees, find them, keep them, train them, build around them.
31. Take vacations often.
32. Keep your word…always.
33. Be generous.
34. Have a sales and marketing plan, review it often and make changes when necessary.
35. A successful business is successful because the owner knows how to run a successful business, not because of how good the product or service offered is.
36. Enjoy yourself, laugh, do not take yourself too seriously.
37. Give back, pay forward for those that dug the well for you to drink out of.
38. Debt can be dangerous, manage it effectively.
39. Do not allow debt to upend your business or personal life.
40. As soon as you believe your debt will eventually bury you, do a pre-emptive workout.
41. Any debt can be worked out…any!
42. Always pay your payroll taxes but if you fail to, it too can be worked out.
43. If your revenues have declined, downsize your operation immediately. Excess payroll will kill you quickly and everyone will be out of work.
44. Your banker is the opposition when in default, do not listen to his demands or instructions. Get help.
45. Do not invade your IRA or 401k to pay down debt, no matter what your banker insists you do.
46. Do not hesitate to do a workout because of fear of credit blemishes, it can be rehabilitated.
47. Renegotiate everything, leases, vendor pricing, everything, this recession will last a long long time. Make adjustments now.
48. Re-define your business equation, the economy has changed you must change as well.
49. There are no employee issues, train your employees to be as good as you want them to be.
50. Enjoy your business life, you made the decision to be a small business owner, it can and should be very rewarding. Remember entrepreneurs are unemployable, you had best make it work.
This is part of what we have learned from our clients, we expect to learn much more. We thank all our clients for showing us the way to succeed.